On April 18, 1891, two Lake Shore and Michigan Southern trains met head-on near Kipton, Ohio, about 40 miles west of Cleveland. The eastbound fast mail, No. 14, was running at full speed. The westbound Toledo Express was supposed to be tucked into the Kipton siding by then, and it wasn't. Both engineers, a fireman and six postal clerks died.
The story you'll usually hear says an engineer's watch stopped for four minutes, then started again. That version comes largely from Webb C. Ball, the Cleveland jeweler the railroad brought in to investigate its timekeeping, as he told it to a newspaper reporter in 1910. The official report at the time blamed a schedule that didn't give the passenger train enough time to reach the siding, and some accounts pin the faulty watch on the conductor instead. Either way, Kipton became the wreck that sold America on watch inspection, and Ball became its best-known inspector.
Ball, the inspectors and the 1893 standards
Railroads were checking watches long before Ball. The Boston and Providence was sending conductors' watches to a Boston jeweler for certificates in 1853. In 1887 the General Time Convention adopted a rule that every conductor and engineman carry a watch certified by a watchmaker, rated to within thirty seconds a week, with the certificate renewed every six months. What Ball added was an organized service. As the Lake Shore's chief time inspector he required checks every two weeks and rejected watches that didn't measure up. He later claimed his service covered about half of the country's railroads, a figure historians still question.
By 1893 a set of recommendations known as the General Railroad Timepiece Standards spelled out what a watch for train service should be. As they're usually summarized, the watch had to be:
- open face, with the winding stem at 12 o'clock
- 16 or 18 size
- 17 jewels or more, with a double roller, a steel escape wheel and a micrometer regulator
- adjusted to at least five positions, and to temperature from 34 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit
- lever set
- fitted with a plain white dial, bold black Arabic numerals and bold black hands
- accurate to within thirty seconds a week
Those were recommendations, though, and many railroads took a decade or more to adopt all of them. Roads kept accepting Roman dials, pendant-set watches and 15-jewel movements for new service until about 1906 to 1908. Most stopped taking hunting-case watches around then, while a few accepted them into the 1920s. Watches already in service were usually grandfathered as long as they kept passing the thirty-second test. Kent Singer, writing for an NAWCC chapter, defines a railroad watch as one that met the time service requirements in effect when it was built. That's the most useful way to think about it.
How the rules tightened
The rules followed the watches as they got better. Around 1906 to 1908 the plain "Adjusted" engraving on standard watches gave way to "Adjusted 5 Positions," and double rollers became nearly universal. Lever setting became the rule for new watches about the same time. By the end of the 1920s most roads wanted a 16-size, open-face, lever-set watch with at least 19 jewels. The Santa Fe's standard for 1929, set by its general watch inspector R. D. Montgomery, asked for exactly that, adjusted to five positions, temperature and isochronism. During the 1930s new 18-size watches were no longer allowed to enter service. After World War II, as diesel-electric locomotives arrived, railroads began asking for nonmagnetic hairsprings, and some published a minimum serial number for each approved grade.
Why lever setting mattered
On a pendant-set watch you pull the crown and turn it, the way you set most wristwatches. That's easy to do by accident while winding. On a lever-set watch you take off the bezel, pull a small lever out from the edge of the dial (usually near 1 or 5 o'clock), and only then will the crown move the hands. Push the lever back, replace the bezel, and winding can't knock the watch off time. Our lever-set and pendant-set pages show how to tell them apart in listing photos.
Five positions, six positions
A watch runs at slightly different rates depending on how it's lying. The five positions in the old rules are dial up, dial down, stem up, stem left and stem right, roughly how a watch sits on a table or rides in a vest pocket. Some movements were also adjusted to a sixth position, stem down. The Hamilton 992B is one of them. Temperature adjustment kept the rate steady from a cold cab to a warm depot, and isochronism adjustment kept it steady as the mainspring ran down.
Grades that were built for it
Each maker had grades aimed squarely at railroad service. Hamilton's 16-size 992 arrived in 1903 and became the most popular railroad watch ever built, followed by the 992E and 992B. Hamilton built its 23-jewel 950 and 950B and the 18-size 940 for railroad service too. Waltham's Vanguard and Crescent Street, Elgin's B.W. Raymond and the Illinois Bunn Special filled the same role. After the war the field narrowed to a few grades built in big numbers, chiefly the Waltham Vanguard grade 1623, the Hamilton 992B and the Elgin B.W. Raymond grade 571.
Keep in mind that a railroad approved the watch, not the factory, and each road kept its own list. A watch can be railroad grade, built to the standard, without ever riding a train. A case engraved with a locomotive doesn't make a watch railroad grade either. One watchmaker who specializes in them says most real railroad men carried plain open-face watches.
Checking a listing
Most of what you need is engraved on the movement, so ask for a clear photo of it before anything else.
- Grade and jewels. Find the grade name or number and the jewel count on the top plate. The standards asked for the grade to be marked there.
- Adjustment. Look for "Adjusted 5 Positions" or "Adjusted 6 Positions." A plain "Adjusted" is normal on earlier watches and on some lower grades.
- Setting. Look for the setting lever at the edge of the dial, or ask the seller for a photo with the bezel off.
- Case style. You want an open face with the crown at 12. A hunting movement in an open-face case puts the crown at 3, which collectors call a side-winder.
- Serial. Date the watch by the movement serial, never the case number. Our guide to dating a Hamilton serial number walks through it.
Then look at the dial. Railroad dials were plain, white and bold, and some carry the numbered minute track the Santa Fe made popular. The dial guide covers what's been redone, and our eBay red flags guide covers the rest of the listing. To compare grades, start with every railroad-grade watch in the catalog.
